Shuddering, I tried to pull away.
“I’m hard at the very thought of what we’re about to do, Eleanor. Gonna taste what’s got my brother in such a tizzy.” Dropping to one knee, he ran his hands down my hips, thighs, and calves until he reached my ankle.
I kept myself locked down. To not react to his heinous touch. To not ram my palm into his nose. We weren’t alone. Men with guns patrolled. Until I had some chance of winning, I had to bide my time.
Wrapping the curtain tieback around my left leg, he pushed me backward until I bumped against a heavily embroidered aquamarine silk couch. Everything was so stuffy compared to the driftwood furniture and seagrass rugs of Sully’s villas. The walls were too thick. The colours too dense.
The large room seemed to squeeze around me as Drake tied me to the couch leg, imprisoning me like some unwanted pet who wasn’t allowed to jump on the décor.
Standing, he grinned. “Just so you don’t get any ideas while we set up.” His dark hair was as rumpled as his clothing. Shadows under his eyes, spite bracketing his mouth. A spoiled little asshole who needed to die.
“You know what? I’ll tie your hands too. Just to be safe.” Clicking his fingers at the younger mercenary, he barked, “Another tieback.”
The request was brought.
Drake jerked me to my feet, the mercenary trapped my hands together, and Drake wrapped the velvet around and around until I was bound.
“Nice and snug?” Drake kissed the top of my shoulder, suffocating me with his conceited pride.
Had he noticed I hadn’t spoken a word to him since Monyet?
Did he care that I’d slipped into silence for protection and mockery?
As long as I kept my tongue quiet, I would not give him extra ammunition against me.
He already has enough.
“Close the doors.” Drake snapped his fingers as he opened another box that his goons brought in, rifling through the contents to fist sensors for Euphoria.
So he’d been coherent enough to take Sully’s virtual reality equipment too.
Shit.
The sounds of three sets of doors closing sent my heart skyrocketing. I looked over my shoulder as locks were turned and any concept of escape was barred.
Drake scowled at the five men in the room. “Three of you get out. Two can stay.” Arching his chin at the mercenary who’d been in the helicopter and Monyet with us and an older guy with a salt and pepper beard, he ordered, “You two, you stay. The rest leave. Stand guard outside.” He chuckled, almost as an afterthought. “There are staff in this house, by the way. Don’t shoot them. I need them to be at my beck and call.”
The three unselected men nodded and slipped through the double doors back into the first living room we’d passed. The buzz-cut guy marched over and locked them, trapping me in hell with three men.
It wasn’t the men who scared me.
It was a tiny mundane vial that held nightmares.
The same vial that Drake plucked from its four hundred bedfellows and stalked toward me. “You hungry, sexy goddess?”
I pursed my lips and didn’t reply.
“I can have my chef cook you anything you want. I saw you snag a few of my grapes, so I know you are.”
It’s a trap. A trick.
And if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t allow him to take any other liberties with me. Raping me? Drugging me? That was one thing. Feeding me? Pretending to care if I stayed alive?
No. No way.
That was the worst kind of blasphemy.
He ran his hand through my hair, making hate flow in my blood.
“We have swans on the property. Rodents too if they haven’t scurried away for winter. Or I can have the butcher cut up a lamb, a cow, a chicken…how about a turkey? Do you like turkey?” He cupped my chin, running his thumb over my bottom lip. “Ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you. I’ll feed you before I fuck you…on one condition.” He leaned forward, pressing a dry, rancid kiss to my mouth.
I ripped my face away, glowering at him.
“Whatever you request, it has to have a heartbeat. No vegetables or vegan shit. Meat and only meat.” He laughed as he deposited the sensors on the same couch I was tied to, opening each and pulling out their contents. “You’ll be staying with me for a few weeks until I tire of you. You’ll be using up a lot of energy in our…sexual perversions. You’ll need to eat eventually.” He grinned, eyeing me up and down. “Don’t worry, you’ll eat flesh to stay alive. Even Sully used to eat meat in his youth.”
I didn’t speak.
I balled my hands and stared past him to the drawn sapphire curtains. The older mercenary had pulled them over the watery sunlight, embalming us completely in the sarcophagus this house had become.